Jumping on the Bandwagon

When I moved to Perú over a year ago, several of my friends suggested that I start a blog to document my cultural gaffes and nocturnal misadventures. I ignored them for two main reasons:

1. I'm a famously horrible storyteller (to put things in perspective, I can out-talk Joe Biden) and 2. My typing skills seriously call into question the sanity of the seventh-grade computer teacher who opted to give me a passing grade.

That being said, I have discovered that after spending a year in South America, my fondness for the heartland, and its politics has surpringly gotten stronger. One of the things I most miss about the United States is the political back-n-forth I engaged in with people who mostly agreed with me at Macalester (a liberal arts college in Minnesota), and others who did not in my beloved hometown of Fargo, North Dakota.

While I´d love to think that my personal life is of any interest to people other than myself, I know that this is most likely not the case. I feel slightly different about my politics, which I really have no problem imposing on people, in a moderate and tolerant way, of course. So, I've started this blog, where I will, from time to time, pick a partisan issue like abortion, gay marriage, or hell, even taxes (I really can´t understand why anyone would piss and moan about a tax proposal that would only force people like Madonna, Bill Gates, and the Pitt-Jolies to pay more) in an effort to point out the radical disconnect that exists between rhetoric and political action.

If you´re wondering about my qualifications, I don´t really have any:). I studied political science (with an emphasis on Latin America), and am a self-diagnosed news-junkie, but I figured that if someone like Glenn Beck is allowed to shape public opinion, nobody would really mind if I added my 2 cents.

So there you have it. My first entry, which in retrospect didn´t include much about partisan politics. I promise to do better on Monday.